


The Feast of All Hallows

by oooknuk



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oooknuk/pseuds/oooknuk
Summary: Fraser takes time to reflect





	The Feast of All Hallows

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All characters you recognise will belong to Alliance. No infringement of copyright intended. Not for profit. 
> 
> Warnings: none 
> 
> Note: I got to thinking that Halloween was really a sad time. This is the result

The moonlight coming through the window lets me check my watch - 00:30. I know why I woke and I know I won't sleep again tonight. I slide carefully out of our bed, gather up my clothes from yesterday, and walk quietly out into the living room. My father's cabin used to be a single room with a lean-to bathroom and outside toilet. Ray Vecchio had insisted I add a proper indoor facility, and although we  never made it up here together to finish it, I respected his judgement. When Ray Kowalski and I came up here together, he argued for a separate bedroom as well, and since I could deny him nothing so trivial, I gladly redesigned the place and gave us a comfortable, large room which catches the sun most of the day. We have, after all, plenty of land, and it didn't use that much more lumber.

Dief is asleep in front of the cooling stove, but grumbles as I carefully reload it with wood. I could, I suppose, point out to him that he should consider himself fortunate to be allowed to sleep indoors at all, but tonight I have no wish to bicker with him. I finish with the stove, put on my coat, and slip out onto the porch. There I sit in the rocking chair that Ray had insisted we buy. "What's a porch without a rocking chair?" he'd argued, and I had told him tartly that he'd seen too many episodes of the Waltons. But he was right, as he so often is - what _is_ a porch without a rocking chair? Just somewhere to pass through on the way in or out. The chair makes it a place to sit, to think - to sit vigil as I am doing, and look at the stars, wondering why we humans see fit to see our hopes and future symbolised by balls of gas that like us, will splutter and die and be as if they had never been.

It is very cold, but I welcome it. It never was like this in Chicago. There was always wind, or rain or sleet, and the snow was dirty, and the frost is just another thing to slip on if you manage to avoid the faeces and the spittle and the litter - and the occasional blood. Here the cold and the snow is clean - it preserves you. Oh, yes, it can kill, I know that. But at least it doesn't cover discarded syringes and condoms and broken glass. It doesn't mean another homeless person will freeze to death for want of a little charity. Up here, you can sit out on your own porch at night and know you're not inviting a gunshot from a random thrill seeker, or risking being mugged or raped or murdered. There is much, truly, to be thankful for. That I am home. That I am loved. That after thirty six years on this ball of clay, I have found a measure of peace.

I hear the door open and close behind me, and he comes out, fully dressed and wrapped in a wool blanket, to sit silently at my feet. He puts his head on my leg, and I place my hand on his hair, stroking it gently. He should have a hat on, I suppose, but he has become used to the climate so much faster than I thought he would. He doesn't ask why I am behaving, as he would no doubt see it, like a lunatic - literally, for I am staring at the moon and the sky, unthinking, never minding the cold.  But he has learned to trust me, as I have him, and he knows that I will eventually explain. And so I do.

"Do you know what day it is?" I ask quietly.

"Halloween," he says just as softly, respecting the church like silence of the vast space around us.

"No. It's after midnight. It's All Hallows."

"All Saint's Day. Holy day of obligation. Used to get a day off at school, but had to go to Mass to pray for the dead. And then we did it all over again the next day on All Soul's Day."

"Did you know, today used to be All Soul's Day, then the Catholic Church changed it to All Saint's Day. But It's still the Day of the Dead, the _Dias De Los Muertos,_ in Mexico."

He shrugs. "Halloween was just apples and trick or treat for us, then we'd go to mass the next day. Never thought about it more than that. We'd light candles for Grandpop and Grandma, but that was it."

"Are they who you used to pray for on All Saints?"

"Yeah. The pope too, when he died. There was ... oh yeah, I remember. Peter Sikowski. Hell, haven't thought of him in years. He was my best friend in grade school - got knocked off his bike when he was ten. I prayed for him. Didn't know what it meant then - I thought he was gonna come back. I was so mad when I found out that we were just hoping he would get out of Purgatory. I mean - Peter was a nice kid, never hurt nobody. What would he be doing in Purgatory? Thought that sucked. Anyway, don't believe in all that bullshit now. When you're dead, you're dead. This is the only go you get."

I feel him shiver from the cold, and I drape my arm over his shoulder. "It's not just All Saint's Day today. It's also the day my mother died." The anniversary, of course. Thirty years today.  Ray turns his head up to me. His eyes, large anyway, look enormous in the moon light. He is like a faun - or fawn. All legs and eyes, a creature of nervous energy and beauty. He was only five, thirty years ago. I wonder what sort of five year old he would have been.

"You never said anything about this before. Why now? Why this year?" Ah, my perceptive heart. He has laid his life out to me, shared his many pains and his not inconsiderable triumphs of the past, and yet I find it hard to reciprocate. The habits of solitude, of secrecy die hard. "It's because of Muldoon, isn't it."

"Yes. It's on my mind more than usual. I thought tonight ... just this once, I would keep vigil, and think of her. It seems appropriate for many reasons."

He kneels so he is closer to me.  "Tell me about her?"

I get off the chair, and push it aside, and sit on the floor next to him, pull him close and draw the blanket around us both. He puts his head on my shoulder, his arms wrapped around me. I can feel his pulse, the rhythm of his breathing. So very alive. So very real.

"I don't remember much - I'm not sure how much is actual memory and how much is what other people have told me.  Sad eyes. I remember those. And her hair was red. I can hear her saying my name - you know, sometimes a woman will laugh, and I think how like Mum. And I remember how she died."

Ray's arms tighten around me instinctively, to protect me. I kiss him to reassure him. "You never said - not the whole time we were after Muldoon."

"It was only after that I remembered - and I didn't want to talk about it then."

"Don't talk about now if it's going to hurt you."

I kiss him again gently, tenderly. So protective of me, my Ray - so much love in his big heart. How could Stella have turned her back on this gift?

"No. It hurts, but not to tell you. No more than not telling you, I mean. I don't know what Muldoon was doing there that day - Dad never told me, and he didn't, as you know, put it in his journals, but I remember coming into our living room and he was there. He visited us often, but there was something wrong that day. Mum was terrified, I saw that. I recall that he shouted and she screamed, and then he just... pulled out his rifle and shot her there and then. She dropped, and he walked out. So calm, like it was nothing. Mum was killed instantly. Hardly any blood."

"You knew she was dead?"

"Oh yes, of course. Dad use to shoot caribou, and she had the same look to her. I just didn't know what 'dead' meant, not when it was my mother. Then Dad came into the house. I don't remember much after that."

My breathing has become short, and hard, and I stop speaking from lack of air. Another flashback. They have plagued me for months.  I wonder now why I have never shared the burden with him, because my heart is perceptibly lighter for telling him, for all the memory is brought back sharply for a minute or two. He nuzzles at my neck, comforting me, kissing me in little bites and nips, then settling back on my shoulder. He waits until my breathing is slower. "That's a horrible thing to know, Ben - I mean, to have in your head."

"Yes it is. But it's not the only memory I have there. There's the nice things about her too. And the other good things in my life. Like you. Especially you."

I feel rather than see him smile briefly, but his voice is full of concern. "But you couldn't sleep - you're upset? Having nightmares?"

"Dreams, yes. But good ones. Dreaming of being loved and cared for.  I don't mind dreaming about her."

"You feel sad, though." A statement of fact. I hold him closer. The scent of his hair is one of my delights, and I inhale. It is not strong in the cold air, but it is him, unmistakably.

"Sad, yes. Regretful. I miss her sometimes - like now." I can't really explain to him that this is more because of seeing her with Dad in March, walking away from me forever in the mine tunnel. I don't think Ray would really understand. I'm not sure I do. "I wish you could have met her, that both my parents could have known what a wonderful son-in-law they have."

"Sure, Ben - the lack of grandkiddies would thrill them to bits," he says dryly.

"They would see things my way eventually. To know you is to love you."

He lifts his face and sticks his tongue out at me.  The five year old emerges, I see. "Did any one ever tell you quoting old pop songs is really not cool, Ben?"

"Only you, Ray."

He groans and jabs me, and I grin. "You gonna sit here all night?"

I nod. "You don't have to, though. It's cold."

"No. I'm with you, wherever you go, or whatever you do. You want to sit out here and freeze your butt, it's fine with me."

And so we do. I talk about Mum, and about Dad, and we tells me about his parents when he was a child, and what he remembers of his grandparents. And as we talk, I also think about us. Our future. My future lying in my arms, holding me, loving me.

Halloween is the ancient feast of Samhain, a night when the Celts - my ancestors - believed that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead is weakened, when the souls of the recently departed can come and take over the bodies of the living. They feared the dead. Tonight, sitting here with Ray, my life, his life so entwined that we can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends, I have no fear of those who have gone. Only a longing that they were still here. That they would come to me just one more time. But I know they will not.

I don't know if Mum and Dad can see us, or if they would approve. I ask them for their blessing anyway, in my mind, and like to fancy that, in the happiness they surely now enjoy together, they give it to us.

And now, sitting in the cleansing cold, I understand the real meaning of this day. My reward for my loneliness and pain of many years lies here with me, this night of All Hallows. To be treasured, and loved, and never forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written nearly twenty years ago under another pseudonym. It hasn't been revised since then.
> 
> I am posting this and my other stories from this period purely so people can read them if they choose. I won't be reading comments, and don't care if you leave kudos. I'm dumping them and running.
> 
> Having said that, I worked hard on them, and I hope they still entertain someone out there.


End file.
